WWE News: Was viewership for SmackDown up or down following the Royal Rumble?

What’s the story?

The ratings for this week's WWE SmackDown Live is in and it has been better in the past, especially for the fallout show, from one of the 'big 4' major pay-per-views.

In case you didn’t know…

The fallout from this week's post-Royal Rumble SmackDown featured the winner of the men's Royal Rumble, Shinsuke Nakamura talking about his big win, and a big tag team main event of Nakamura and WWE Champion AJ Styles taking on Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn.

The heart of the matter

This week's SmackDown brought in 2.509 million viewers, which is not only down from last week, but is the lowest SmackDown Live rating so far in 2018.

SmackDown was #21 in viewership for this week on cable, and #9 in the 18-49 demographic. The weekly show had some stiff competition this week as it was up against FOX News programs related to President Donald Trump's State of the Union Address, four programs related to CNN's coverage of the SOTU, Curse of Oak Island, Fixer Upper, Tucker Carlson, Hannity, The Story, The Ingraham Angle, Special Report, The Five and four programs related to MSNBC's SOTU coverage.

What’s next?

SmackDown doesn't have such big competition over the next few weeks, so it is safe to assume that the ratings will improve next week.

Author’s take

Ratings are a tricky game today. So many fans all over the world are finding other ways to watch WWE programming in order to cut down on bills for the channels that carry WWE programming.

It is not just WWE, as this is an issue that is affecting almost every television show in the world today. WWE is still bringing in top dollars on every other aspect of business, so they and the USA Network are well-aware that WWE's ratings would be far better if 'fans' weren't streaming RAW, SmackDown and even WWE Network shows.